BERKELEY CONNECT in PHYSICS

The Berkeley Connect program opens up the extraordinary resources of the university to you: the extraordinary students on our campus. By joining, you will become part of a community of like-minded faculty, mentors, and students that will provide a supportive environment in which to exchange and discuss ideas and goals. Berkeley Connect will help you to make the most of your time at the university as you learn more about the major in Physics. We’re excited to get to know you!

Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program within the physics department that is accepting undergraduate students at all levels. The goals of the program are to help students develop understanding, community, and career preparedness that goes beyond what traditional courses provide. Interactions with graduate students and faculty will play a large role throughout the semester. The course is a small seminar class led by a physics graduate student. Some of the meetings will include:

Visits to research labs on campus and at the national labs to talk to faculty, scientists, and grad students

Preparing students for a broad range of career trajectories including ones outside of academia

Discussions of science in the news and science and society

Resources for finding research opportunities on campus, REUs, internships

Developing skills that will make you an attractive candidate for undergraduate research

Exploration of the idea of scientific models

Building a community of physics student scientists

Berkeley Connect is a 1-credit seminar course that meets once a week for one hour. It is designed to be very low workload but have large benefits for undergraduates.

Berkeley Connect links undergraduate students with experienced mentors in Physics. These mentors lead small groups of 10-20 students in regular meetings; they also meet with students one-on-one to provide guidance and advice. The core of the Berkeley Connect program is a one-credit, pass-fail course that is designed to create a community of students with similar intellectual interests. There is no homework associated with Berkeley Connect: no exams, no papers, no quizzes. Instead, small group meetings focus on sharing ideas and learning new skills within the Physics major as a way to foster friendships and provide a supportive intellectual community for Berkeley undergraduates.The only requirement for joining Berkeley Connect in Physics is that you have an interest in the field of study. You do not have to be a major in order to participate! Undeclared freshmen and sophomores are welcome, along with entering junior transfers and juniors and seniors who have declared the major.

Every semester, Berkeley Connect sponsors a wide range of activities and events for participating students. Â They include:

small-group meetings led by your mentor;

one-on-one meetings with your mentor;

special events, including informal lectures by professors and guest speakers, and panels on career options, graduate school admissions, and other topics;

and visits to Berkeley resources.

At the heart of Berkeley Connect is the relationship between you and your mentor. The Berkeley Connect mentors are advanced graduate students or recent PhDs in Physics, who are chosen both for their demonstrated commitment to undergraduates and for their scholarly achievement. They are dedicated to providing the kind of close-knit community and one-on-one attention that can be hard to find at a large university.

When you sign up for Berkeley Connect, you will join one of several small groups of participants in Physics. Your small group will be led by your mentor, and will meet every other week during the semester for an hour-long dinner discussion sessions. Discussions will focus on key intellectual issues within Physics as well as key skills you need to succeed in the major. Above all, the small groups will focus on building connections among students, so that each group becomes a supportive community for all participants.

You will also meet with your mentor one-on-one at least twice during the semester, once to get acquainted, and a second time just before Tele-Bears, to discuss your plans for completing your major. Your mentor also has office hours every other week, during which you are free to show up and ask questions, talk over your day or your week, discuss what you are learning in class, or just have an informal conversation.

Bernard Sadoulet (Director),a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1963) and a “Docteur es Sciences” of Paris-Orsay University (1971), is by training an elementary particle physicist. As such, he had the chance of participating in two prestigious experiments which led to Nobel Prizes: the Mark I experiment at SLAC which discovered the J/y, the t lepton and the charm, and UA1 at CERN which discovered the intermediate vector bosons W and Z. In 1984 he decided to shift his efforts towards particle astrophysics and cosmology. In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1989 to 2001 he was the Director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, one of the 11 first generation Science and Technology Centers of the National Science Foundation. He is currently Director of the UC system-wide Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (INPAC). You can learn more about his research here: http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/Sadoulet.html

Holger Müllersuccessfully applied for his first patent when he was 14. Later, he did his undergraduate thesis with JÃ¼rgen Mlynek at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He graduated from Humboldt-University, Berlin, with Achim Peters as advisor. MÃ¼ller received a fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation and joined the group of Steven Chu in Stanford as a postdoc. In July 2008, he joined the Physics faculty at UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor. You can learn more about his research here: http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/mueller.html

Micah Brush is a second-year graduate student in Physics originally from Vancouver, Canada. He did his undergraduate at Simon Fraser University before moving to Cambridge, England for a year for Part III Maths. He is currently working on models of ecology, but has also worked in theoretical physics. He has been interested in education and outreach since working at an astronomy outreach center as an undergraduate, and is looking forward to being part of the Berkeley Connect program and discussing university life with students.

Arjun Gambhir is a postdoctoral researcher working in the Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Additionally, he is a Visiting Scholar and Instructor in the Department of Physics. His research interests include algorithms relevant for high performance computing, hadron structure, and numerical methods in lattice gauge theory. When he’s not engrossed in a physics project, Arjun loves hiking and kayaking during the daytime and playing board games in the evening. He is excited to be part of Berkeley Connect and to have wonderful discussions about science and education.

Paul Riggins is a fifth-year graduate student in Physics, working with Surjeet Rajendran on high energy theory and phenomenology. Besides playing with physics, Paul enjoys mentoring, singing, and thinking about games in education and society. He is excited to support the Berkeley undergraduate community and have awesome conversations about life and science.

Combine the resources of a major research university with the intellectual atmosphere and the close-knit community of a liberal art college

Meaningful conversations about Science, Physics and Society

Making implicit the “hidden curriculum” (e.g., intellectual habits—striving to understand deeply, critical thinking, links to other concepts, orders of magnitudes, mathematical representations etc.—) that we expect our students to pick up through their formal courses

Engaging Berkeley Connect students in a learning community and getting them involved in the various activities of the Department: Research, Teaching, Public Service

Provide support and mentorship through their peers, the Fellows and Department Faculty.

1.2. Learning outcomes

Active participation in learning and consolidation of intellectual habits of a scholar

Ability to integrate what is learned in formal courses into a broad view of Science, Physics and Society

Clear view of career options and steps to be taken in the following years

This course is designed for 4 semesters for entering freshmen and 2 semesters for Transfer students. The activities will be organized around 4 themes: Science and Physics; How to get involved?; Life as a young scientist; Science and Society. The detailed topics will vary from year to year, striving to cover the most important topics over 4 semesters (two for lower division, two for upper division).

The overarching theme for this semester will be “Variety of Physics”.

Roughly every other week, the students will meet in 50 minutes “sections” of 15- 20 people with a Berkeley Connect fellow. These sections will be on Tuesday through Thursday between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m . Food will be provided. The typical format of a section will be 10’ check in (how things are going?) and 40’ of discussions on the theme of the section, in a mix of smaller group discussions and general discussion. There will not be lecturing by the Fellow, nor homework, but typically less than half hour readings will be suggested to prepare for the class. Food will be served. Section attendance is compulsory (apart from medical reasons) and attendance will be taken. There are currently 4 sections for lower division students, 2 for upper division and 2 for transfer students.

The alternating weeks will be devoted to panel discussions, local visits, and participation once a semester in departmental colloquium or public lecture. To accommodate the diversity of schedules, we will have panel discussions usually alternating between Tuesdays 5-6pm, Wednesdays 5-6pm and Fridays 4-5pm. These events will be open to the whole department. Berkeley Connect Students will be required to attend in person at least 50% of these events (i.e. 4 minimum) and to review the webcast if they cannot after the panels/seminar. Attendance will be taken! Visits will be organized through Doodle polls. We will have a field trip, likely to a Silicon Valley location.

Berkeley Connect students will be required to meet one-on-one with Fellows twice a semester.

Once the list of department colloquia or special seminars is known, we will choose one that we will advise Berkeley Students to attend.

The sections of Thursday are exceptionally to Thursday Feb 1 (Miguel is out of town)

Lower division: How does one become a physicist?

Transfer, Upper division: Share about current plans for career.

3.1.2. Week 3, General event: Scientist Panel

Wednesday January 31, 5-6 pm 251 LeConte: Panel discussion with scientists from UC Berkeley and LBNL: How did you become a scientist? What do you do? How did you evolve to your current focus?

One-on-one meetings in weeks 3 and 4

3.1.3. Week 4, Sections February 6-8: What makes an activity science? Key aspects of the Scientific Methods and the Culture of Science. Norms and practices scientists agree are essential to rigorous scientific investigation.

To find sections in the upcoming semester, search the Schedule of Classes for Physics 98BC (for first-year and sophomores) or 198BC (for juniors and seniors).To help you meet other students who share your experiences and perspectives, Berkeley Connect sections are designated as lower division (first-year students and sophomores), new junior transfers, and upper division (juniors and seniors), but you can enroll in any section that fits your schedule and credit requirements.

To participate in Berkeley Connect in Physics, you enroll in a designated section of Physics 98BC or 198BC (one unit, taken on a Pass/Not Pass basis). Many students chose to enroll for more than one semester. Participation is NOT restricted to declared majors.To sign up, enroll in a Berkeley Connect section when course registration opens. Please see the Berkeley Connect sections listed above under “Schedule.”

**Read the schedule notes carefully—different sections are designated as primarily for lower-division (freshmen and sophomores), upper-division (juniors and seniors), or junior transfer students.

If you are interested in participating in Berkeley Connect, but course registration is not currently open, you can join the Berkeley Connect Mailing List, and you will be sent more details when the next semester’s information becomes available.